Does Your Vote Affect Fishing?

Dateline: 8/14/00

I will admit my bias up front. 

On a filing cabinet by my computer, I have a newspaper clipping showing a picture of Bill Clinton bent over and the caption says "Bill Clinton pauses  Saturday in Little Rock, Ark., to release a frog in the Arkansas River.  The frog was the pet of his daughter, Chelsea, who wanted the animal to have a more normal life than  is possible in the White House." The date on the clipping is January 17, 1993.

My first thought when I saw this was "Why doesn't he just put it in the freezer, or stomp it." Can you imagine "releasing" a frog into the freezing water of the Arkansas River in January. How long do you think it took for it to die?  Some "normal" life.

That was my first inkling of Clinton's knowledge of wild animals and the environment. If he did not know enough about animals to do something like this, what would he do when legislation about fishing and hunting came up.

Unfortunately, my answer was not long in coming. A bill he supported would ban "cop killer bullets." That sounds great, until you read the fine print that said the bill would ban any bullets that could be fired from a handgun that would penetrate bullet-proof vests.

I got a 30-30 deer rifle for my 18th birthday in 1968, and have killed many deer with it. If that bill Clinton supported had passed, bullets for my deer rifle would have been illegal. Any rifle bullet legal for deer in Georgia will penetrate a bullet-proof vest. And there are handguns made for firing almost all of them!

I do not know if Clinton supported this bill not knowing its effects, or just did not care.

Soon after that, another picture of Clinton appeared in the paper, this one showing him holding a shotgun and a dead Canada goose. The caption said "The president went goose hunting with some friends in Arkansas. When questioned about killing a goose, he was quick to say he went hunting but did not shoot anything." I guess that is kinda like "not inhaling!"

I do not trust anyone that pretends to hunt or fish and then backs down when questioned, or demonstrates such a lack of knowledge of the outdoors. So I am prejudiced against Gore from his association with Clinton on this issue.

What will Al Gore or George Bush do that will affect fishing if elected? I have been able to find nothing specific on fishing, but some info from the internet does discuss their positions on some outdoor issues.

Gore says he is in favor of doing away with dams on salmon rivers. That sounds great - if you are a salmon fisherman that likes to fish rivers, and do not like using electricity. Eliminating the dams not only ends power generation, it does away with fishing in the lakes created by them. Bush says he is in favor of leaving the dams in place.  That does not address the problems the dams cause by stopping the salmon spawning run.

Both candidates say they are for clean air, clean water and protecting the environment.  Gore says Bush owes big business and will not make them protect the environment.  Bush says Gore is hypocritical because he leases some of his land to a mining company blamed for polluting water in his home state.

Bush wants less federally mandated controls.  http://austin.about.com/citiestowns/southwestus/austin/library/weekly/aa012100f.htm